When Bribery is Considered an Economic Necessity: Facilitation Payments, Norm Translation, and the Role of Cognitive Beliefs

Abstract

Abstract Since the 1990s, when a global anti-corruption norm emerged which in part targeted the use of bribery in international business activities, international support has been growing for a related norm against the use of facilitation (or “grease”) payments. Despite ambiguous language in the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and despite the lack of material enforcement mechanisms, many OECD convention signatories have explicitly banned facilitation payments. Among the few remaining holdouts, Canada and New Zealand recently addressed this omission in their anti-corruption legislation; only Canada opted to eliminate its legal exception for facilitation payments. Building on recent models on norm translation, this article foregrounds the differential roles of normative and cognitive beliefs to explain the different outcomes in these similar cases. Drawing on elite interviews and primary documents, this article argues that select Canadian business representatives helped shape the cognitive beliefs of policymakers through institutionalized consultations in the legislative process, thus facilitating the adoption of the new norm.